The Plural of Water - by Bruce Bond (Paperback)

About the Book

"Bruce Bond's new book of poetry, The Plural of Water, offers a trilogy of sequences that explore the relation of the unconscious--our denials, affinities, passions, and self-divisions--on our ability to perceive and negotiate the crises of our contemporary moment. Through a series of lyrics, both personal and historical, the book's sections constitute parts of an integrated whole that seeks a deeper understanding of the psychological roots of ethics: traumatic fracture, ecological holism, and the unrepresentable, multiple, communal dimensions of personhood"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Bruce Bond's new book of poetry, The Plural of Water, offers a trilogy of sequences that explore the relation of the unconscious--our denials, affinities, passions, and self-divisions--to our ability to perceive and negotiate the crises of our contemporary moment. Through a series of lyrics, both personal and historical, the book's sections constitute parts of an integrated whole that seeks a deeper understanding of the psychological roots of ethics: traumatic fracture, ecological holism, and the ineffable, multiple, communal dimensions of personhood, drawn to and from the dark of all we love, dread, and labor to transform.

Review Quotes

"In The Plural of Water, Bruce Bond composes a searching, open-field meditation on the fractured psyche, ecological precariousness, and the lyric's capacity to hold the unrepresentable. Structured in three movements, this collection traverses trauma, memory, and planetary grief, engaging with suffering not as a subject to be resolved but as an epistemological and ontological problem. Here, the lyric is a porous body: vulnerable to the pressures of violence and silence, yet capacious enough to hold contradiction, fluidity, and recurrence. Bond's poems unspool in an elliptical syntax that mirrors the fragmentary experience of consciousness itself, fusing philosophical inquiry with imagistic precision. At once somatic and cerebral, The Plural of Water asks how we perceive, what we inherit, and whether language--like water--can ever bear the full weight of what it is asked to carry."--Kimberly Grey

About the Author

Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-seven books, including the recent prizewinning poetry collections Vault and The Dove of the Morning News. He teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.